John W. Whitehead

Leila Tarantino has filed a lawsuit against the Citris
County Sheriff’s Office for a 2011 traffic stop during
where a female officer removed a tampon during a
road side strip search in plain sight of oncoming traffic.

“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation

During a routine traffic stop, Leila Tarantino was allegedly subjected to two roadside strip searches in plain view of passing traffic, while her two children—ages 1 and 4—waited inside her car. During the second strip search, presumably in an effort to ferret out drugs, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. No contraband or anything illegal was found.

● A North Carolina public school allegedly strip-searched a 10-year-old boy in search of a $20 bill lost by another student, despite the fact that the boy, J.C., twice told school officials he did not have the missing money. The assistant principal reportedly ordered the fifth grader to disrobe down to his underwear and subjected him to an aggressive strip-search that included rimming the edge of his underwear. The missing money was later found in the school cafeteria.

● Suspecting that Georgia Tech alum Mary Clayton might have been attempting to smuggle a Chik-Fil-A sandwich into the football stadium, a Georgia Tech police officer allegedly subjected the season ticket-holder to a strip search that included a close examination of her underwear and bra. No contraband chicken was found.

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Rixon Stewart

Nearly one hundred years ago Russia underwent a revolution that was to be echoed decades later in China. In historical terms, Russia transformed almost overnight from Imperial Russia to the Soviet Union. From being a largely peasant society ruled by an all powerful Emperor, Russia became a supposedly egalitarian state.

Ostensibly classless, Lenin’s proclamations about the proletariat and the rights of workers were used to dupe the masses. For ultimately Russian communism was based on one thing and one thing only: a belief in the absolute precedence of materialism.

That’s why, according to his grandson John Schiff, to ensure its success, millionaire Jacob Schiff “sank about 20 million dollars for the final triumph of Bolshevism”. For communism was essentially the brainchild of the super rich and served their purposes, rather than those of the ‘workers’.

So despite claims of a more equitable distribution of wealth and although Russia’s leaders may have cloaked their real intentions with political jargon, materialism was still the bedrock on which Russian communism was built. In the eyes of Soviet political commissars any type of spiritual belief was consequently seen as a form of heresy. Resolutely atheistic, they elevated ‘scientific materialism’ over and above any spiritual faith, which they deemed as little more than superstition at best, and a threat to “communism” (i.e. faith in materialism) at worst.

However neither the industrial nor agrarian workers enjoyed much in the way of economic benefit from this new dispensation. They were too busy trying to meet harvest and production targets for that. In other words, their lives were totally beholden to the dictates of materialism.

With hindsight we now know that Russian communism simply didn’t work. Beyond its failure as a political and economic system it also brought unprecedented suffering to millions in the gulags.

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Konstantin Gordeev

Edward Snowden, a young American, grabbed the world attention in the wink of an eye making the revelations on US global surveillance come into the open. The world telecommunications are under constant surveillance carried out by the watchful eye of US special services. The snooping is ubiquitous encompassing US citizens and people in other countries of the world. It’s really complete, there is no exaggeration here, it spreads on bums and presidents, bitterest enemies and bosom friends - all of them watched at any given moment. Phone calls are eavesdropped, fax messages, including the coded ones, are tapped, Internet networks and electronic messages are intercepted, bank transactions are followed, each and every thing is under the eagle eye, there is no escape and no exclusion from the rule.

No surprise, many in America think Snowden is a «traitor» and a «spy». But there is something else that is important: according to polls, over 40% of US citizens say no to the persecution of Snowden, they approve his actions and think he is the one who has revealed the illegal activities of US special services.[1] What has he done to make the US authorities exert pressure on other countries so that they would land foreign presidential planes or make the United States threaten everyone who dares to grant him political asylum at the time tens of thousands Americans come out to show their support for Snowden and his courageous deed? That’s what the Americans say in their in website and blogs posts comparing the US administration actions with fascism, in particular, that’s what an article published by the Truthout says.[2] A petition asking President Barack Obama to pardon admitted state secret leaker Edward Snowden and stop his persecution has passed 100,000 signatures.[3-4]

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